Presentations

ENIGMA Seminar Series (virtual) March 27, 2025
Avi I. Flamholz, Assistant Professor \| Rockefeller University	Quantitative Relationships between Environments and Genome
EPS Seminar (virtual) March 5, 2025
Kevin Peter Hand , Planetary Scientist at JPL, Director Ocean Worlds Lab \|California Institute of Technology	Ice Shells as a Lens into the Chemistry and Habitability of Ocean Worlds
EPS Colloquium – Rutgers University (virtual) February 14, 2025
Emeritus Professor Michel Blanc, Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (IRAP), CNRS-Université Toulouse III \| CNES, Toulouse France.	A Journey to Jupiter and Its Moons
ENIGMA Seminar Series (virtual) November 11, 2024
Nicholas Hud, Co-Director, Center for Fundamental and Applied Molecular Evolution (FAME), School of Chemistry & Biochemistry \| Georgia Institute of Technology	A Self-Assembly Approach to Identifying Possible Ancestors of RNA
ENIGMA Seminar Series (virtual) October 14, 2024
Diego Ferreiro, Co-Director, Protein Physiology Lab, Department of Biological Chemistry Sciences \| University of Buenos Aires, Argentina	Solvent Constraints for Biopolymer Folding and Evolution in Extraterrestrial Environments
ENIGMA Seminar Series (virtual) September 30, 2024
Carolina Martinez-Gutierrez, Assistant Professor, Early Life & Microbial Evolution Lab, UC Santa Barbara	Disentangling the Origins of Alpha and Beta Carboxysomes in Cyanobacteria
ENIGMA Seminar Series (virtual) April 1, 2024
Ram Krishnamurthy, Professor of Chemistry, Scripps Research Institute	Transition from Prebiotic Chemistry to Protobiology?
ENIGMA Seminar Series (virtual) March 18, 2024
D. Eric Smith, External Professor, Santa Fe Institute	Folding as a Rule System with Information Agency, and Emergence at the Big Bang of Protein Folds
ENIGMA Seminar Series (virtual) March 4, 2024
Robert M. Hazen, Senior Staff Scientist, Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science	Mineral Evolution: A Case Study Of A New Natural Law
ENIGMA Seminar Series (virtual) December 4, 2023
Elizabeth Rampe, Scientist, Astromaterials Research & Exploration Science (ARES), NASA	Environments on Early Mars from the Curiosity Rover and Terrestrial Analogue Studies
ENIGMA Seminar Series (virtual) November 20, 2023
Kristin N. Johnson-Finn, Assistant Professor, Chemistry & Chemical Biology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute	Electrochemical Insights on Hydrothermal Organic Chemistry – Next Steps in Electron-Transfer Reactions of Carboxylic Acids
ENIGMA Seminar Series (virtual) October 23, 2023
Prabakaran Ramakrishnan, Emory University	Learning the Language of Metagenomes to understand Molecular Function
ENIGMA Seminar Series (virtual) April 3, 2023
Costantino Vetriani, Rutgers University	The Chemosynthetic Microbiome of Deep-sea Hydrothermal Vents across Time and Space
ENIGMA Seminar Series (hybrid) February 6, 2023
Jan Siess, Graduate Fellow, Quantitative Biomedicine, Rutger	Utilizing Dynamical Attributes to Parse Ferredoxin Structural Domains
ENIGMA Seminar Series (virtual) \| December 12, 2022
Michael Hecht, Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University	Sustaining Life with Genes and Proteins Designed De Novo
ENIGMA Seminar Series (virtual) \| November 28, 2022
Wolfgang Nitschke, Director of Research, Bioenergetics & Protein Engineering, CNRS	Life as we don’t know it” at the very beginning? (bioenergetics’ take on emergence-of-life-research)
ENIGMA Seminar Series (hybrid)\| November 14, 2022
James Eguchi, Post-doctoral Researcher, Earth and Planetary Sciences, Rutgers University	Reinterpreting the Sedimentary Carbon and Sulfur Isotope Records in Light of Links between Earth’s Surface and Iinterior Carbon and Sulfur Cycles
ENIGMA Seminar Series (hybrid)\| November 7, 2022
Anhuai Lu, Professor, School of Earth & Space Sciences, Peking University	Mineral Photoelectron Energy for Prebiotic Synthesis and Microbial Metabolism
ENIGMA Seminar Series (hybrid)\| October 3, 2022
Yossi Paltiel, Professor, Applied Physics and Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem	The Chiral Induced Spin Selectivity(CISS) Effect
2022 Summer School in Planetary Sciences at the University of Science and Technology of China (virtual)\| August 4, 2022
Paul G. Falkowski, Distinguished Professor, Dept. of Marine and Coastal Sciences and Earth and Planetary Sciences, Rutgers	The Origin and Emergence of Global Coupled Biogeochemical Cycles
2022 Summer School in Planetary Sciences at the University of Science and Technology of China (virtual)\| August 3, 2022
Robert Hazen, Staff Scientist, Earth & Planets Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science	An Evolutionary System of Mineralogy: A mineral informatics approach
PCE3 Seminar Series \| June 9, 2022
Shaunna Morrison, Research Scientist, Earth & Planets Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science	Mineral Informatics: A mineralogist’s perspective
PCE3 Seminar Series \| June 9, 2022
Anirudh Prabhu, Geo-Informatics Scientist, Earth & Planets Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science	Mineral Informatics: A data scientist’s perspective
2022 Annual ENIGMA Astrobiology Symposium \| May 10, 2022 (Day 1)
Paul Falkowski	Welcome and Introduction
Vikas Nanda	Theme 1 Overview
Salma Kassem	Approaches for the In-situ Emergence of Functionality in Peptide-based Systems
Yana Bromberg	Theme 2 Overview
Nir Ben-Tal	Protein Archeology: How Proteins Emerged and Evolve?
Nathan Yee	Theme 3 Overview
Dru Myerscough	Determinants of Multiheme Cytochrome Electron Transfer Uncovered by Systematic Mutation
Bhanu Jagilinki	Selenium Oxidoreductases – A Promising Alternative Biochemistry for more Reducing Worlds
Saroj Poudel	Ecological Distribution of Nitrogenase Reveals Modern Isoforms Evolved to Potentially Bind Charged Proteins to Mitigate Oxygen Toxicity
Diego Ferreiro	From Evolution to Folding of Repeat-Proteins
2022 Annual ENIGMA Astrobiology Symposium \| May 11, 2022 (Day 2)
Paul Falkowski	Welcome and Introduction
Shaunna Morrison	A Brief Introduction to the Mineralogy of Mars
Corday Selden	Experimental Investigation of Amino Acid Binding as a Mechanism for Fractionating Metal Stable Isotopes in Proteins
Daniel Hummer	Data Mining the Past: Using Large Mineral Datasets to Trace Earth’s Geochemical History
Janice McDonnell	Education and Outreach Overview
Kevin Hand	Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space
2021 Società Geologica Italiana \| December 2, 2021
Paul G. Falkowski, Distinguished Professor, Dept. of Marine and Coastal Sciences and Earth and Planetary Sciences, Rutgers	Origins of Oxidoreductases
Robert Hazen, Staff Scientist, Earth & Planets Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science	The Co-evolution of Life and Rocks: Visualizing 4.5 billion years of Earth history
Donato Giovannelli, Assistant Professor, Microbiology, University of Naples Federico II	Subsurface Life can Impact Volatile Cycling in Subduction Zones
Rutgers Mathematical Physics Seminar\| September 15, 2021
Paul G. Falkowski, Distinguished Professor, Dept. of Marine and Coastal Sciences and Earth and Planetary Sciences, Rutgers	Light to Life on Earth
PCE3 Seminar Series \| July 15, 2021
Hannah Rutledge, Graduate Student, Tezcan Lab, University of California San Diego	On the Brink of Stability: Redox Dependent Conformational Changes of the Nitrogenase P-Cluster
2021 Annual ENIGMA Astrobiology Symposium \| June 8, 2021 (Day 1)
Paul Falkowski	Welcome and Introduction
Dror Noy	Dan Salah Tawfik Memorial
Jeremy England	Self-Organization of Lifelike Behaviors
Sara Walker	Planetary Systems Biochemistry: Inferring the Laws of Life at a Planetary Scale
Aaron Martinez	Biomarkers in the Geologic Record
Gonen Ashkenasy	The Systems Chemistry of Peptide Networks
Douglas Pike	A Protein Structure Sequence: Decoding the Deeper Structural Evolution of Proteins Upon Which Amino Acids Vary
Betul Kacar	Between a Rock and a Living Place: A Molecular Paleobiology Approach to Explore Life’s Origins and Early Evolution
Saroj Poudel	Expansion of Positively Charged Cavities Enabled the Evolution of Substrate Specificity in Rubisco
2021 Annual ENIGMA Astrobiology Symposium \| June 9, 2021 (Day 2)
Paul Falkowski	Welcome and Introduction
Birte Hoecker	Evolution of Proteins from Subdomain-sized Fragments
Ariel Aptekmann	Mebipred: Protein Sequence Metal-binding Prediction Web Server and Standalone Tool
Dennis Dean	Aspects of Nitrogenase Catalysis and Assembly
Corday Selden	Tracing N₂ Fixation in the (Marine) Environment
Markus Ribbe	Reactivities of Isolated Nitrogenase Cofactors
Jennifer Timm	Reconstructing a Potential Primordial Hydrogenase
RUTGERS-NASA ENIGMA ONE DAY BIOINFORMATICS BOOT CAMP (virtual) \| March 4, 2021
Vikas Nanda and Yana Bromberg	Welcome and Introduction
Andrei Lupas	On the Origin of Life: From Networks of Prebiotic Reactions to the DNA-protein World
Pedrag Radivojac	Introductory Machine Learning for Protein Function Prediction
Vikas Nanda	Navigating Data in 3D – Inferring Deep-time Evolution from Structure
Yana Bromberg	Microbial Signatures of Life
Curtis Huttenhower	Computational Methods for Probing Microbial Community Function
RUTGERS-NASA ENIGMA ONE DAY GEOLOGY BOOT CAMP (virtual) \| November 19, 2020
Paul Falkowski	Welcome and Introduction
Jun Korenaga	Early Earth Environment
Ros Rickaby	What is Isotopic Fractionation and How does it Work?
Carl Swisher	How do we Date Rocks
Rutgers Earth & Planetary Sciences Summer Seminar Series\| July 29, 2020
Paul G. Falkowski, Distinguished Professor, Dept. of Marine and Coastal Sciences and Earth and Planetary Sciences, Rutgers	Results from the Field: Enigma Breakthroughs
2020 Annual ENIGMA Astrobiology Symposium \| June 16, 2020 (Day 1)
Paul Falkowski	Welcome and Introduction
Vikas Nanda	Overview of Theme 1: Synthesis and Function of Nanomachines in the Origin of Life
Daniel Segrè	Traces of Early Life in the Architecture of Metabolic Networks
Yana Bromberg	Overview of Theme 2: Increasing Complexity of Nanomachines in Microbial Ancestors
Cara Magnabosco	Biogeodynamic Models for Deep Time
Nathan Yee	Overview of Theme 3: Co-Evolution of Nanomachines and the Geosphere
Janice McDonnell	Education and Outreach
2020 Annual ENIGMA Astrobiology Symposium \| June 17, 2020 (Day 2)
Paul Falkowski	Welcome and Introduction
Yi Lu	Designing Redox-active Metalloenzymes Involved in Electron Transfer Processes
Saroj Poudel	Plenary Presentations Theme 1: Synthesis of Ancestral Nanomachines
Bhanu Jagilinki	Plenary Presentations Theme 1: De novo Iron-Sulfur Proteins/Peptides and its Implications in Understanding the Origins of Life
Kenneth McGuinness	Plenary Presentations Theme 1: Completing the Earth’s Electron Transfer Chain
Ariel Aptekmann	Plenary Presentations Theme 2: Ancient Protein Repeats
Adrienne Hoarfrost	Plenary Presentations Theme 2: Capturing the Complexity of the Bio-Geosphere with Deep Transfer Learning
Julian Esselborn	Plenary Presentations Theme 2: Mimicking Metalloprotein Evolution by Combination of Metal Binding Motifs
Bob Hazen	Plenary Presentations Theme 3: THE FIRST ENZYMES? Roles of Mineral-Molecule Interactions in the Origins of Life
Joy Buongiorno	Plenary Presentations Theme 3: Tectonic Settings and their Control on Oxidoreductase Assemblages
Jihua Hao	Plenary Presentations Theme 3: Phosphorus Chemistry in Planetary Waters: Early Earth and Enceladus Ocean